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One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

datastation.multiprocess.io

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Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#51

Post by leetrout »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #28
jasfi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you determine how to split equity? Edit: I'm not looking for actual %s, just the factors involved.

Would like to know as well. This is tricky, as all your assets are probably intellectual property and hard to put a price tag on. Also some people have a hard time accepting that they are eligible for a smaller piece of the cake than you are.

Random thought on this: I do not personally believe the owner of the idea is worth more than 10% of equity. They have to be contributing something to get more. It may be capital, it may be sales but it has to be something.

I dream to start a company where I am able to steer almost every decision and the company shares automatically reduce my ownership over X years until a kind of coop forms and most employees have enough equity as a group to control the company. Give away control to put the right incentives on hiring. Also none of this 1 year cliff vesting nonsense. If you are willing to join a startup I am willing to give you equity immediately.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#52

Post by streetcat1 »

If you can, it is always better to go full time.

If you hourly rate is 150$ (in the market), and you can work 300H a month (including weekend) (It should be 400 hours - 13 hours a day).

Than you are basically making around 70-100K a month (in value), but paying only 4K (in cash, your living expenses).

Of course, if you are 2X, 3X , 4X engineer , you are basically making 300K a month for 4K cost.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#53

Post by rubenfiszel »

Your story is very inspiring and it mirrors closely my experience with building windmill.dev as a solo founder, an OSS project for multi-step automation from minimal scripts. I got lucky enough to get into YC this batch and if this is of any interest to you, we could really use someone with your experience in the founding team. Shoot me an email if of any interest: ruben@windmill.dev

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#54

Post by eatonphil »

rubenfiszel wrote: post #53

Your story is very inspiring and it mirrors closely my experience with building windmill.dev as a solo founder, an OSS project for multi-step automation from minimal scripts. I got lucky enough to get into YC this batch and if this is of any interest to you, we could really use someone with your experience in the founding team. Shoot me an email if of any interest: ruben@windmill.dev

Actually it was because of your post a month ago getting in that made me apply to YC in the first place. Nice work yourself. :)

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#55

Post by streetcat1 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #45

Advice regarding VCs: Don't ever talk to them if they randomly approach you saying they "really like what you're doing". They will gladly sent an associate to talk with you about your business in the greatest detail and ask you to share presentations, demos and metrics. Anything you give them will then get passed along to their own portfolio companies in your space. So don't feel flattered when they feign interest in…

The markets are huge (I dare to say endless). Nobody is getting killed.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#56

Post by ThePhysicist »

james_impliu wrote: post #46
ThePhysicist wrote: post #45

Advice regarding VCs: Don't ever talk to them if they randomly approach you saying they "really like what you're doing". They will gladly sent an associate to talk with you about your business in the greatest detail and ask you to share presentations, demos and metrics. Anything you give them will then get passed along to their own portfolio companies in your space. So don't feel flattered when they feign interest in…

Had this happen (random outreach). Led to a series A. Respectfully disagree - I don't think competitors copying is a significant risk early on, compared to running out of money whilst trying to hit product market fit.

Fair point, maybe I formulated that a bit drastically, though I have seen this kind of reconnaissance increase quite a bit recently, so maybe I'm just fed up with it.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#57

Post by nxmnxm99 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #45

Advice regarding VCs: Don't ever talk to them if they randomly approach you saying they "really like what you're doing". They will gladly sent an associate to talk with you about your business in the greatest detail and ask you to share presentations, demos and metrics. Anything you give them will then get passed along to their own portfolio companies in your space. So don't feel flattered when they feign interest in…

If intel in your company will kill your business you don’t have a defensible business.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#59

Post by mns06 »

jasfi wrote: post #24
jensneuse wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marketing guy, I found on YC Startup School Co-Founder Match ( https://www.startupschool.org/ ), the Developer was creating GraphQL Open Source projects that were related to what I was building, so I've got in touch with them. I can definitely recommend Startup School, it helped me build a lot of useful connections.

How did you determine how to split equity? Edit: I'm not looking for actual %s, just the factors involved.

a cofounder and I used this system for a previous company: https://slicingpie.com/ It worked pretty well for us, but we were also pretty well tuned to each others expectations in advance.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#60

Post by amacneil »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #45

Advice regarding VCs: Don't ever talk to them if they randomly approach you saying they "really like what you're doing". They will gladly sent an associate to talk with you about your business in the greatest detail and ask you to share presentations, demos and metrics. Anything you give them will then get passed along to their own portfolio companies in your space. So don't feel flattered when they feign interest in…

Your advice is correct, but the reason is wrong. If you want to raise money, then inbound VC interest is a great source of leads (led to out series A, similar to sibling comments).

But VCs employ armies of people to trawl the internet for new companies, and as an early stage founder you are time poor. Tell them that you are focusing on building right now but would love to chat when the time is right, add them to a spreadsheet, and go back to work.

The time to start taking calls is when you are actually ready to raise a pre-seed/seed, or ~6-12 months out from your series A (by this point you should have a team who can keep building while you are networking).

Also as the author noticed, treat the VC calls like a phone screen, and ask questions to filter out bad matches. If they don’t lead rounds at your current stage, or don’t “get” your product or market, move on.

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